Dirty Dancing {Jelena} ✔

Chapter 28

"You deserve both an apology and an explanation"

I never once in my life felt like they weren't my parents, I mean yes they've been busy with work and weren't really home that much. But there are a lot of parents that are more attentive to their work over their kids, nothing screamed 'they're not your real parents' about that.

But then to come face to face with your truth after all these years of lies, it just leaves you in utter and complete shock, if not even denial. Then after the state of shock/denial comes the worst stage. It's not the final stage though, because that would be either acceptance with your reality or just the continous of its denial. No, I'm talking about the stage that all questions starts crawling inside your head, and they just don't leave you to find the final stage until there's closure. Answers. That was what I needed to reach my final stage. Whether it be denial or acceptance.

Maybe that explains my willingness to sit across from her on the table, waiting for her to give me the closure I needed. Of course, it's been silent for some time, neither one of us knowing how to approach this or from where exactly to start it.

"You've seen the room upstairs, it wasn't yours. We were supposed to have a baby girl, we named her Andrea. I'm sure she would've been such a beautiful little girl, like you. I had a miscarriage and the doctor told us I'd never be able to get pregnant again. We were beyond devastated. God seemed to be punishing us from all the bad things we did by not giving us the one thing we wanted the most...but then one night there was a knock at the door. And when we opened it, there you laid, so beautiful and innocent. We thought you were our second chance. And so we took it"

"We tried looking for your real parents, there was this journal. It was hard, but just when we found out how your birth mother died and couldn't find your father, we thought this was fate's way to tell us you were ours. And that's how we raised you, we never once thought of you as anything other than our daughter, our first born. I know we've swerved off the right road later on and became more engrossed with our jobs. But you were and will always be our baby girl. You have no idea how many times we've planned on telling you, but we just didn't want to hurt or confuse you. You had and still have a great life here with us, you were saved. We didn't know how to tell you that you weren't ours, how your birth mother died and your father just can't be found. We couldn't hurt our baby like that and we're so sorry you had to find the truth on your own-"

And then for the first time, I witness something I thought I'd never see. My strong mother just breaks, tears breaks past her strong exterior, showing the pain she's been trying to hide and bottling up inside for who knows exactly how long. And the pain that consumes me for ever being a cause of even an ounce of that pain, fills me and is heart-wrenching. Maybe they weren't my birth parents, but they've never made me feel otherwise. In fact, I don't even know where I could've been, who I would've been right now if it weren't for them taking me in and raising me up as their own, when they didn't even have to.

"I'm so sorry, mom..."

And it's that simple small word that makes her if possible cry harder. I'm up from my seat and embracing her tightly. There was absolutely nothing in this world that could ever change the fact that she was my mom and nothing could change how much I love and respect her.

*

It was almost like a huge wave, unexpected and not giving us any warning of it coming. One minute, the water was calm and the next, a tsunami was heading our way. It was the urgency that I felt in her text maybe that knocked all air out of me. I left, heading to the one place I wish I hadn't left when I did.

My mom of course tried stopping me, telling me that it was going to be dark soon. But I didn't listen, I couldn't, because my body was already moving me to my car and soon enough I was speeding down the road. The sun was setting, drowning in the tsunami headed my way and so was my heart.